Hedge90 wrote: ↑Wed Dec 29, 2021 8:50 am
I think I get what you're saying. The difficulty with these things is that even in an idealist framework, one's thinking tends to default back into a dualism between what is physical and what is mental. So I unwittingly make a metaphysical distinction between when I think something in my personal mind, and when I think something through conversation with others. I say one is "my thought", while the other is a "result of interaction". But if we stay within the idealist framework, then the interaction is a thought too, as well as the result of the interaction. They are just somewhat different kinds of thoughts.
It is difficult as long as we're caught up in the hysteresis process and we don't grasp the Thinking process.
Today we're at very interesting evolutionary situation:
Human consciousness is generally encapsulated. This can be likened to embryonal stage, where the "I" lives within the uterus (the leftmost picture). I've tried many times here to point out that the psychedelic state doesn't lead to some fundamental state of consciousness but only illuminates the uterus walls from the inside. We live within the womb of our physical and etheric bodies. It's the same with the general mystical state.
Through spiritual development we can attain to the second birth, when the "I" begins to recognize the bodily sheaths as part of the general environment.
John 3 wrote:
3 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
4 Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born?
5 Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
7 Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.
Indeed, in the current evolutionary stage the life between physical birth and death is something akin to gestation period and physical death is the birth in the real world outside the womb (the world in the womb is Maya). Yet things stand in such a way that we must prepare consciously our spiritual being for that birth, otherwise we're born as cripples and continue our work in the next gestation cycle.
Once consciousness begins to expand further than the personal bodily constellation, we begin to sense thoughts in the environment.
Here I hinted something about the nature of these perceptions. Please don't mistaken this process to dissolving in the environment. The rightmost picture is exaggerated. We'll have our personal physical and etheric prism for a very long time to come but we'll also be feeling more and more as a Spirit which only makes use of the prism, like we use a suit. It's not the goal to leave behind the sensory spectrum. The goal is to develop the full spectrum such that we can gather the spiritual forces through which we can become artful masters of the physical realm.
PoF prepares the process by bringing understanding of the fundamental polarity of the waters and the Spirit (Perception - Idea)
It should be stressed that the above picture is by no means to be taken in literal geometric sense. The important thing is to realize that our inner screen is not self-enclosed sphere completely opaque to other supposed spheres. Our etheric volume is part of an etheric world. In our life of will we accept that we're in contact, we operate in the same physical world. It's the same with the world of feelings and thoughts, except that the organs of perception for these layers are only now beginning to develop.
Before the second birth, all we know is the inner life in the womb. That's why we speak of veils, boundaries, solipsism, etc. But through our Spirit we are also part of the spiritual world outside the personal capsule (again we should be very careful that words like 'outside' are not to be taken in strict geometric sense). As long as we don't find the place of thinking, we only observe thoughts appearing and disappearing as pictures on the womb's walls. Only by experiencing ourselves as an active spiritual being, which weaves the thinking process, we begin to experience the part of ourselves which lives in meaning outside the capsule. Only when we understand how the Spirit shapes the waters
within ourselves, we'll be gradually developing our sensitivity to cognize the World Spirit's weaving in the World Waters, of which we grasp only a tiny aperture.
Returning to the original question "Why do we experience only our own womb and not whatever we want?" Because we must attain to the thinking gestures which correspond to environment different from the one we know. It's like being mathematically illiterate and asking "How come I don't perceive any of the things mathematicians talk about?" The "I" is growing as a spiritual core of interrelations of spiritual activity. As long as we live exclusively in our own womb, it is as if we live in a single room, where we're very used to the furniture, where things are and so on. Everything we perceive there reminds us only of experiences that have happened in the same that room. To grow beyond the room we need to develop real loving interest in our fellow human beings and also in higher beings. We begin to find their thinking gestures when we're seeking to expand our own palette to include them, in the same way someone seeks to expand his thinking palette with mathematical thinking gestures. Only by seeking the Human Universal, we have the chance to find the unity of the world content which includes also the life of other beings. It's not enough to have compassion. We can have compassion within our womb. To be born we need Love. Without Love we support the walls of the womb because we don't want to find out that we share common Life.